I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: WE ARRIVE ALIVE-“Walls” (2011).

I discovered We Arrive Alive from the Girl Band bandcamp site (it says the bands are friends).  They are from County Wicklow and play very cool post rock instrumentals.  They have three EPs, all of which are available for free on their bandcamp site.

Their first is called Walls.  The opening song “Walls” has fast guitar with a slinky Sleater-Kinney kind of guitar progression. Unlike S-K, there is bass and no vocals. The middle section feels like any number of post-rock instrumentalists like Explosions in the Sky.  But it’s not derivative–it’s expansive and beautiful.  “Save Me from the Morning” is a much faster song with a more intricate bassline underneath the guitar riffs. The structure of the song makes it seem more like a conventional song (ie one with words). But there are no words, and the guitars fill in very nicely for where vocals might appear. But 90 seconds in, the songs switches gears and becomes a bit more jazzy.  Then around 3 minutes the bass takes over with big loud notes—it’s a great transition. There’s yet another part, a quiet section, that ends the song.  That’s a lot of music packed into 6 and a half minutes.

“This is a City” is the final song.  A seven minute slow building instrumental. It starts quietly and the intertwining guitars get louder as they echo more.  I love the way at around 5 minutes the song shifts gears entirely to a sort of electronic feel with pinging notes.  It ends with a  fantastic closing riff.

I’m glad to have discovered these guys, I love a good collection of instrumentals.

[READ: March 17, 2015] A Little Lumpen Novelita

This may be the final extant untranslated book by Roberto Bolaño.  Although I have yet to read The Secret of Evil (that fell right off my radar), as far as I can tell, the only things left untranslated are:

• Diorama (this book is unpublished at all, so it’s unlikely to be translated anytime soon)  AND
• Consejos de un discípulo de Morrisona un fanático de Joyce, 1984  [Advice from a Morrison Disciple to a Joyce Fanatic] which has yet to be translated and I don’t know why, so I assume it never will be.
  

I don’t fully understand the use of the word “Lumpen” in the title, but don’t let that odd word (which is in the Spanish title, so we can’t blame excellent translator Natasha Wimmer) keep you from reading this breezy and entertaining (if not a bit dark) book.

As with many books by Bolaño, there’s not a lot of plot, per se.  In this book, a young woman (Bianca) and her brother have been orphaned at a young age.  Their parents died in a car crash in Italy (which is where they live).  They try to cope as best they can, but they ultimately decide to drop out of school and do nothing except watch a movie a day.  Bianca tells her brother that they can’t afford that lifestyle (especially since he just seems to get X-Rated films), but he continues to do so anyway.

They realize that they will need money of course, so Bianca gets a job as a hair washer at a salon.  Her brother gets a job cleaning floors at a gym.  It seems to be enough for the time being.

The story opened with Bianca talking about her life of crime.  The whole novella is a flashback to her younger days.  She explains that she was never a prostitute, but she felt inexorably driven to crime of some kind.

One day when she got home her brother was sitting in their house with two new friends, a Bolognan and a Libyan.  She assumes that he met them at the gym. They look an awful lot alike and people think they are brothers, but they are not.  They basically move in.  She doesn’t mind so much because they are incredibly neat–cleaning up the whole house, keeping it spotless and occasionally cooking for them.

Eventually, one of them (she is not sure which) knocks on her bedroom door and she accepts him in.  She was a virgin before this night.  It becomes a nightly event (never really sure which man is in her room) until she begins locking her door unless she wants them to come in.  And this seems to be their life.

Until the two men hatch a plan.   The plan involves robbing a local former celebrity.  He was once a Mr Universe and a film star, but has recently let himself go and barely leaves his house.  Their plan is simple (as long as Bianca is willing to go along with a potentially distasteful part).

When she finally meets the man, he is enormous and blind.  But he treats her kindly.  And she begins to have some kind of feelings for him.

Bianca was a nihilist after her parents died and yet somehow this event has given her hope.

It may not be the most brilliant story, but Bolaño has a way of creating characters who are interesting and unusual even if they are not wholly believable.  There’s just something about Bolaño’s voice (or perhaps Wimmer’s translation) that I really like.   And this book has that in spades.

I just read another post which explained the title: Lumpen refers to a social status, akin to that of an outcast or troublemaker, perhaps criminal.  So at least that makes sense.

I’m looking forward to reading The Secret of Evil and then one of these days, I’m going to re-read his shorter works to see how I feel about them after having read all of his other books.

For ease of searching I include: Bolano.